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This book, the first in a series of work on Africans, whose life and thought have left a major impact on the world, is devoted to the Senegalese physicist, historian and linguist, Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop, who was born in Diourbel, Senegal on December 29, 1923, and died in Dakar on February 7, 1986. No figure in the field of African civilization studies has been more highly regarded in the French and English-speaking world than Diop. In 1966 the First World Festival of Arts and Culture attributed jointly to the late W.E.B. DuBois and Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop its "Award of the Scholar who had exerted the greatest influence on Negro thought in the 20th century." The book has nearly a hundred illustrations. "Great African Thinkers--Vol. 1., Chiekh Anta Diop" features impressions of the man--"Conversations with Diop and Tsegaye" by Jan Carey; critiques of his major works "The Cultural Unity of Africa: the Domains of Patriarchy and of Matriarchy in Classical Antiquity" by Asa Hillard III, "The Changing Perception of Cheikh Anta Diop and his work" by James G. Spady, "Cheikh Anta Diop and the New concept of African History" by John Henrik Clarke; "The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality"--Review by A.J. Williams-Meyers; "Civilization or Barbarianism: the Legacy of Cheikh Anta Diop" by Leonard Jeffried, Jr. and "Diop on Asia: Highlights and Insights" by Runoko Rashidi; interviews "Africa's Political Unity," "Emancipation and Unity," "Negritude and the African personality" and "Ethnicity and National Consciousness" by Carlos Moore; "Dr. Chiekh Anta Diop" by Shawna Moore, "Meeting the Pharaoh" and "Further Conversation with the Pharaoh" by Charles S. Finch; the first authorized English translation of the introduction and two opening chapters from his last major work "Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology" by Edward G. Taylor; a selection of essays by Diop--"Origin of the Ancient Egyptians;" "Iron Metallurgy in the Ancient Egyptian Empire" a translation by Darryl Prevost; "Africa's contribution to the Exact Sciences" and a selection of lectures made during his first and only visit to the United States.

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Dr. Ivan Van Sertima was born in Guyana, South America. He was educated at the School of Oriental and African Studies (London University) and the Rutgers Graduate School and held degrees in African Studies and Anthropology. From 1957-1959 he served as a Press and Broadcasting Officer in the Guyana Information Services. During the decade of the 1960s he broadcast weekly from Britain to Africa and the Caribbean.

He was a literary critic, a linguist, and an anthropologist who made a name in all three fields.

As a literary critic, he is the author of Caribbean Writers, a collection of critical essays on the Caribbean novel. He is also the author of several major literary reviews published in Denmark, India, Britain and the United States. He was honored for his work in this field by being asked by the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy to nominate candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature from 1976-1980. He was honored as an historian of world repute by being asked to join UNESCO's International Commission for Rewriting the Scientific and Cultural History of Mankind.

As a linguist, published essays on the dialect of the Sea Islands off the Georgia Coast. He also compiled the Swahili Dictionary of Legal Terms, based on his field work in Tanzania, East Africa, in 1967.

He is the author of They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America, which was published by Random House in 1977 and is presently in its twenty-ninth printing. It was published in French in 1981 and in the same year, was awarded the Clarence L. Holte Prize, a prize awarded every two years “for a work of excellence in literature and the humanities relating to the cultural heritage of Africa and the African diaspora.”

He also authored Early America Revisited, a book that has enriched the study of a wide range of subjects, from archaeology to anthropology, and has resulted in profound changes in the reordering of historical priorities and pedagogy.

Professor of African Studies at Rutgers University, Dr. Van Sertima was also Visiting Professor at Princeton University. He was the Editor of the Journal of African Civilizations, which he founded in 1979 and has published several major anthologies which have influenced the development of multicultural curriculum in the United States. These anthologies include Blacks in Science: ancient and modern, Black Women in Antiquity, Egypt Revisited, Egypt: Child of Africa, Nile Valley Civilizations (out of print), African Presence in the Art of the Americas (due 2007), African Presence in Early Asia (co-edited with Runoko Rashidi), African Presence in Early Europe, African Presence in Early America, Great African Thinkers, Great Black Leaders: ancient and modern and Golden Age of the Moor.

As an acclaimed poet, his work graces the pages of River and the Wall, 1953 and has been published in English and German. As an essayist, his major pieces were published in Talk That Talk, 1989, Future Directions for African and African American Content in the School Curriculum, 1986, Enigma of Values, 1979, and in Black Life and Culture in the United States, 1971.

Dr. Van Sertima has lectured at more than 100 universities in the United States and has also lectured in Canada, the Caribbean, South America and Europe. In 1991 Dr. Van Sertima defended his highly controversial thesis on the African presence in pre-Columbian America before the Smithsonian. In 1994 they published his address in Race, Discourse and the Origin of the Americas: A New World View of 1492.

He also appeared before a Congressional Committee on July 7, 1987 to challenge the Columbus myth. This landmark presentation before Congress was illuminating and brilliantly presented in the name of all peoples of color across the world.